Archive for Software/desktop

Richard | August 20, 2010
2 comments

Voice recognition still not yet there!

For how many years has it seemed that voice recognition was just about there? This year sees renewed interest in the software, especially for students who have graphomotor coordination issues. These students have difficulty getting the many ideas in their heads out onto paper or computer quickly enough.

Sometimes, the Dragon Dictation app for iPhone does pretty well. This time, it didn’t!

What it heard What I said
Alina’s Becky I figured out the problem with a smart card and science one turns out that it’s a setting in the displays preferences panel the gamma level which controls the blackness of the image I can set incorrectly so I will send you a how to Africa together but the good news is you can make the image look better just by taking a setting on your laptop talk to you soon. Bye-bye Aline and Becky,

I figured out the problem with the Smart Board in Science 1. Turns out that there is a setting in the Displays preferences panel — the gamma level — which controls the blackness of the image. It can be set incorrectly, so I will send you a how-to, or we can walk through it together, but the good news is you can make the image look better by changing a setting on your laptop.

Talk to you soon,

Bye.

Category: Software/desktop, Software/mobile | Tags: , , ,
Richard | August 16, 2010
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Creeping closer …

Today, we received the first student laptops for annual maintenance, which also marks the unofficial end of summer project work within the IT department. From here on in, we fully devote ourselves to laptop maintenance and responding to user requests as teachers return to school and staff prepare for the start of term.

We finished nearly all of the faculty laptop computers last week, save those that required a trip to Apple to repair a broken or malfunctioning part. They required a lot of work. We moved all of the Windows machines to 7, since XP is now out of support. The Macs required extensive research to devise the best configuration for printers, wireless access, and network access. Attempts to automate the process were regularly foiled. It took far too much effort to reach a point of reasonable confidence that the configuration will work effectively. Hopefully, things will go more smoothly for the student machines.

Signs of the impending school year abound. Divisions heads meet this week to plan for the year. Some teachers have shown up for summer curriculum planning meetings. I’m not actually certain what all goes on next week, but August 30 brings the official start of the school year for teachers. They will attend division retreats and opening meetings. Grades 6-12 start before Labor Day weekend, whereas grades PS-5 start after. Oregon requires only 160 days of school in the year, well below the 180 in our neighboring states.

Category: Laptop programs, Software/desktop | Tags: , ,
Richard | July 19, 2010
2 comments

Email Strategies

As mentioned yesterday, our most popular technology training this summer is Managing Your Email Inbox. Far from old-fashioned, this topic hits most of our teachers and staff members head-on. Email is ubiquitous on campus, the most used technology for 200 employees to distribute information to individuals and groups of different sizes. It is common for employees to receive 100 emails per day, and they’re not of bad quality, either. Parents use email the most to communicate with teachers.

Despite the ubiquity of email, not all employees possess strong technical email skills. Whether or not email is an “old” technology, lacking these skills is a contemporary issue. Some attendees at today’s workshop came to learn to use a desktop email client for the first time. Others already knew how to use rules and folders but wanted to find out how their peers handled the email deluge.

We practiced tips from GTD, Inbox Zero, and Send today. We explored the triage technique to deal with new messages immediately and once when possible. We created rules to move listserv messages to subfolders and increase the relevance of inbox messages. We turned off notifications and set the mail check interval to 20 minutes. We encouraged ourselves to quit our email applications to limit distractions. We shared our own knowledge of reading techniques, since that was not emphasized in the materials I read when preparing the workshop.

Read the lesson notes here.

Photo source: biscotte

Category: Professional Development, Software/desktop | Tags: , ,
Richard | June 20, 2010
One comment

New Computer Much Like the Old

I was pretty excited to replace my work MacBook Pro for the first time in four years. Although the new machine is very nice, my computing experience has not changed much. Contrast that with my last computer replacement, when I got an Intel chip for the first time, or the time before, when I received my first aluminum Powerbook.

Two of my favorite applications have apparently gone through some transitions. Smultron has been discontinued. I suppose a text editor does not require much in the way of updates, but I will eventually need to switch. I had thought that NetNewsWire was also discontinued, since it disappeared from Newsgator’s list of products. I guess it’s just gone under the radar. You can find it here.

Category: Hardware, Software/desktop | Tags: , , ,
Richard | March 25, 2010
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Repeal the OSX expand button!

Let’s start a campaign to repeal the OSX expand button that appears on Save and Print dialog boxes. Who’s with me!

This button has been the bane of my computer classes and new Mac users for years. Too small to gain attention, too ambiguous to communicate meaning, the button is often missed by frustrated users trying to print multiple copies or navigate to a different file share. True, you can select a different file share using the popup menu, but you can’t navigate to a subfolder.

The expanded print and file dialog boxes are much easier to see and interpret. Once a user has expanded the dialog box once, it remains expanded, so that the user never learns its function. When the user sits down at a new computer, they are stymied once again.

Category: Software/desktop | Tags: , ,
Richard | October 31, 2009
2 comments

Microsoft Entourage, Exchange Web Services edition

This new version of Microsoft’s email client for Mac has not gotten much attention, but anyone who uses Entourage to connect to a Microsoft Exchange Server should consider installing the free upgrade. Version 13.0.0 is also known as the “Exchange Web Services” edition. At the time of writing, you need to download and install the update manually from the Microsoft Mac website. It only works with Exchange Server 2007

EWS screen shot

Microsoft has changed the technology the Entourage uses to exchange data with an Exchange Server from WebDAV to Exchange Web Services. This is as important as it sounds! You can notice the effect most clearly when synchronizing large numbers of items, such as when you migrate accounts or sync with a public folder. In my experience, the rate of data transfer has improved by many times. Beware that the upgrade does erase your local Entourage profile, so back up any Entourage data stored locally on your machine first. Any data already stored in your Exchange account will reload from there, so you don’t have to worry about that.

As with the last few versions of Entourage, the EWS edition talks to your organization’s client access server (which also hosts webmail), so Entourage works just as well off-campus and on.

Entourage 13 also synchronizes notes and to-do items, which previous versions did not.

One of our users files his mail into dozens of folders. With Entourage 12, his folders took so long to sync that the Sent Items folder would remain several days out of date, never having the chance to fully synchronize. Version 13 saved our bacon by (presumably) synchronizing more quickly and being able to keep all of his folders updated.

Incidentally, we are also using the EWS protocol in one of our home-grown web scripts to publish a calendar on our website for employee use.

Microsoft Entourage 2008, Exchange Web Services edition

Category: Software/desktop | Tags: , , , ,
Richard | January 5, 2009
3 comments

Video In-Service Training

I could use your feedback on a digital video training session I am designing. The purpose is to provide an overview of different video technologies that we make available to teachers at our school, so that they may subsequently choose one and pursue it in-depth at a later date. I would like to make it hands-on without getting project-based during this one-hour time session.

I plan to provide a short conceptual overview of different video technologies and then take the group through a series of hands-on stations, rotating the individual who sits at the setup each time. This will provide a nice balance between hands-on and time constraint.

Here are my planning notes for the session. How should I improve the plan? Please submit comments below!

Why video?
- the MTV and YouTube generations
- reaching all learners
- visual literacy

Where to post video
- Catlin web site
- Moodle
- Drupal

Web video
- if you see it, how should you share it?
- “Share” links, embed code, HTML rights
- HTML editing modes: Catlin web site, Moodle, Drupal
- other formats

United Streaming
- what it contains
- how to bookmark or share

Video cameras
- capture
- Firewire and USB cables
- software (iMovie, MovieMaker, Premiere Elements)
- transfer, edit, export

Flip Mino
- capture
- USB transfer
- conversion

TV Recorders
- Cable and satellite sources
- Schedule on TiVo web site (incl. login information)
- Burn to DVD
- Finalize recording

Live TV in the classroom
- Best for momentous events (when it has to be live)
- Few live cable or satellite connections
- Over-the-air digital TV setup

Category: Software/desktop | Tags: , , , , ,
Richard | August 8, 2008
3 comments

Set Default Encoder in iTunes (Applescript)

I dug up this command today for a project, with the help of Doug’s Applescripts for iTunes.


tell application "iTunes"
set current encoder to encoder "MP3 Encoder"
end tell

We like to set the default encoder for importing, especially on shared computers, in order to facilitate the conversion of audio files captured using Olympus audio recorders and Windows computers.

I also learned how to show all of the supported Applescript commands for an application: Script Editor -> File menu -> Open Dictionary. Now why didn’t I know that two months ago?

Unfortunately, iTunes does not include support to show the Kind column in the items view, which I was hoping to script.

Category: Software/desktop | Tags: ,
Richard | August 5, 2008
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iPhoto Workshop

Class in progress

Catlin Gabel teachers hone their iPhoto skills.

I just finished teaching a successful two-day workshop in iPhoto. Like many of our classes, I was so pleased that eight teachers and staff members chose to spend some of their summer time developing new skills that they may use this year. Photo management software inspires a lot of energy from our colleagues, so visual and personal yet also connected to their work here at school. Notable, a few attended simply because they were longtime PC users at work who were about to purchase a Mac at home. In this project-based workshop, I also learned much about the print publishing options of iPhoto, such as the ability to drop photos into individual day cells in the calendar tool. One teacher placed 160 photos into one twelve-month family calendar! I also noted how quickly I found myself teaching the students Flickr, in order to fetch Creative Commons photos to import and manipulate, when many had forgotten their digital cameras. One staff member created an entire musical slideshow about trout. Amazing.

Category: Software/desktop | Tags: , ,
Richard | July 28, 2008
One comment

Summer Workshops Begin

We have started our summer tech training workshops, classes that the IT staff and our media arts instructor teach on topics that our employees select. These require a lot of time and preparation from our staff, but our employees highly value the opportunity to learn. Our offerings this year include workshops on desktop publishing, Excel, iPhoto, Picasa, Mac OSX and Windows XP Pro. I am pleased that operating systems were a popular choice this year, given how overall proficiency with basic features is pretty low. I blame the software companies for annually rolling out new eye candy that help them market the products while underemphasizing fundamentals that help people work better. I wish that more people wanted to work on web technologies in the classroom, but we will have more opportunities to work on that once the school year begins.

Excel class

One challenge is the wide range of skill levels present in each class. Each teacher handles this challenge in her own way. I make the workshop highly project based and let the curriculum emerge from student interests and questions. This does leave me scampering around the room a lot answering questions and solving problems, but it keeps everyone working all the time at their level. This disappoints some students who come to the class expecting a lot of direct instruction, but most participants leave happy. I will teach the MacOS and iPhoto workshops. Do send any killer activity ideas that you have organized or encountered.

InDesign class

Category: Software/desktop | Tags: ,
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